10.03.2017.
Promotion of the book "African notebooks and other human notes"
The latest edition of Odbrana Media Centre, the book "African notebooks and other human notes" by Colonel Milivoje Pajović, Chief of the Peacekeeping Operations Centre, was promoted today at the Conference Hall of the Central Military Club.
Dragan Hamović, PhD, writer and advisor to the Minister of Culture and Information and Dragana Marković, editor and the author, spoke about the work based on the experience of the first major and independent engagement of the Serbian military medicine and the military in the United Nations' mission MINUSCA in the Central African Republic, while actor Nebojša Dugalić read excerpts from the book.
The fact that the author had something to write about, and that we got a "multiple stimulating book" was confirmed by Dragan Hamović, PhD, who said for Colonel Pajović that he persistently covered up his poetic core "due to priority jobs and calls to which he devoted his life".
- His "African notebooks" indicate, from the very title signals, the broad thematic scope, the variety of intonation, as well as the matter of diary genre, and the mixed nature of travelogue, essay papers, the adviser to the Minister of Culture and Information said, adding that both the drier and precisely written testimony of a soldier and personal and intellectual comments found their place in the notes.
Hamović found that any trip is a tectonic shift but the trip undertaken by a Serbian officer in the peace mission had to be in every way a step forward from one universe to another.
- Pajović wanted to conjure up for us not only painful and tortuous foreign missions in the heart of messy Africa, but also the need to reflect his country and his army in the eyes of others - Hamović said and reminded that the base, which the Serbian contingent erected in "the wasteland", commanded by the author had a name from Šumadija - Morava.
Speaking about the "African notebooks", editor of the publication, Dragana Marković emphasized that this is not a travelogue, but it has elements of this kind of storytelling, and it is not even clean diary saying of a commander.
- A special spice for the pages of "African notebooks" is added exactly by their mirroring in the "human notes", the sophisticated narratives about people, rulers, towns, villages, roads, birds, rivers and life.
Author of the book "African notebooks and other human notes," Colonel Milivoje Pajović, stressed that it is a part backed by several authors, they were all members of the Armed Forces who stayed with him in the first rotation of the Serbian contingent in the Central African Republic.
Describing his first day in that African country, with raging ethnic conflicts, Pajović shared his personal impression that "in that night the stars turned, and he did not recognize any of them".
The stars there shine differently, birds seem to fly backwards, and raindrops are bigger than anything I have ever seen, and then, two days later, there was a huge sandstorm that covered our base by dust - a garden of 20 acres in which we lived for five months, Pajović said.
Speaking about the mission, thousands kilometres away "from the home garrison", he said that they lived there, watching the people around them, and tried to understand where they were similar and where they were not.
- We lived 195 days, watching as the night fell suddenly, as if someone had dropped it over our heads, and as the morning sun popped up, as if someone launched it by a catapult, and we watched the life as it went by, disappeared, and how it returned again - Chief of the Peacekeeping Operations Centre said, as he was to set off for his new African adventure the next day in the dawn, where he will bear a special responsibility as a deputy commander of Sector West in the UN Mission MINUSCA.
Odbrana Media Centre has already published two books of Colonel Pajović - "Rulers of Serbian lands", and "Two centuries of army in Braničevo".
